Radar Propagation Experiment in the North Sea: The Sylt Campaign

This paper describes an experiment that was carried out in the North Sea off the Sylt island in May 2012 with the aim to study the influence of the maritime boundary layer conditions on the propagation of radar signals under low grazing angle geometry and to establish a sea clutter database at different frequencies with a view to contribute to new sea clutter models. The radar measurements were carried out with the highly versatile radar called MEMPHIS operating in sea configuration at X-, Ka-, and W-band, simultaneously. As concerns the oceanographic and atmospheric characterization, the collection of measurements was done with a sophisticated suite of sensors partly mounted on the research vessel (RV) Elisabeth Mann Borgese (EMB) and onboard different types of buoys, a catamaran, and a tethered balloon. Over a period of four days, a comprehensive and valuable data set was successfully collected including clutter measurements under different geometrical configurations and propagation runs with corner reflectors mounted onboard RV EMB. An insight into the overall approach is given together with many measurement examples for a very detailed oceanographic and meteorological characterization and a vast number of multifrequency radar acquisitions, showing the complexity of different parameters that have to be considered for sensor performance assessment and prediction.